After living here for several years, a thought comes to mind.

As a rule, Chinese are not attracted to sweets, desserts, chocolates. This is a basic fact.

So this begs the question, "Why do they make/eat such disgusting sweet things?

Example, sweetened mayonnaise and ketchup. It's horrible! Or meat that is sweet. Especially sausages. Pizzas with sweet fruits glopped on.

I really can't get a handle on this.

I'm not so sure it's a fact that they're not attracted to sweets. There's a bakery at every street corner.

The country hasn't been particularly affluent in recent history. So when people's income is limited, not much is spent on sweets, which are essentially an unnecessary indulgence. But now that GDP is rising, so is consumption of chocolates and baked goods.

At least, that's how I see it.

That's why there getting fat. They are consuming sugar in more and more things. Even in things that aren't normally sweeten. Sad really.

yeah, right. diabetes rates have gone up due to increased consumption of sugar and refined flour.

Some of those sweet weird things were already established in nearby asian neighbors such as Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. Chinese like to emulate their more advanced rich neighbors and those countries like to sell their stuff to here.

The populations of the world have a sweet tooth, we just never had access to refined sugar and carbs until more recent history. Now we have access to industrialised foods, including sweet things.

China has loads of its own traditional sweet things. Sticky rice, rose cakes, honeycomb toffee, nutty bars (like muesli bars but cut from a 2x2x0.3m slab) full of honey, nut toffee, hard caramel toffee (liquid poured on a cold slab to make animal and other art on a stick), hard toffee on fruits on a stick, sticky rice treats galore, wheat sugar confectionery (hard butfibrouss sugar in chunks), there are also traditional high sugar drinks, and those are just the ones I can think of off of the top of my head.